


The Hero in Despair

by fojee



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Feels, Poetry, Spoilers for Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 12:17:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19318009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fojee/pseuds/fojee
Summary: This is the story of Tony Stark, and all that he loved and all that he fought for. In poem form.





	The Hero in Despair

**Author's Note:**

> Me working through my feelings for Endgame. (Also the intersection of my “pro” writing and my “fannish” writing.)

I climbed out of the long madness  
Shaped like a cave  
A hole in hell where I lost my heart.

And I built a new heart  
To dwell in that hollow,  
And it worked, god help me,  
And god help the man who died to save me.

And I built an exoskeleton  
So the seams won’t show,  
So the world won’t know  
How much I have really lost.  
And in its cradle  
I breathed in my own sweat,  
Covered myself in blood,  
And felt reborn.

Until the father I never had  
Tore me open to steal my core  
And I made a choice  
To unmake a man.  
And I was being just, being fair  
But I drowned in my own despair.

When the skies opened  
Above the lighthouse  
They called me to war  
And I fought with all that I had  
And I swam through a star-lit ocean  
Crowded with mad whales  
Singing mad songs without care  
And I drowned there.

My breath curdled in my lungs,  
And I loved a girl, but her voice faded in my ears  
And I floated into the light  
But the shadows followed me home.

And I built an exoskeleton  
And I filled it with all that I loved,  
But rage and fear crawled through the seams  
And it swallowed me whole.

And I drowned there, in the space  
Shaped like me, in the nightmare  
That I built, in the memory  
Of the ones I lost, in the cold air  
Of the mountain, in the mistakes  
That I carried home  
Nestled under the heart  
That they took from me.

And I found my own heart  
To dwell in that hollow,  
A reason to live in the shape of a boy.  
And I lived, god help me  
And god help the child who followed behind me.

And he came with me to the deep ocean,  
In a broken ship, fought with me  
Against monsters, died for me at the last hour.  
And this must be more than I can bear.  
And I drowned there,  
Drowned in the taste of fear  
Drowned in the ashes  
That fell through my hands,  
Caught in a nightmare of nothing,  
And my limbs became twigs  
And my words dwindled to gasps of air  
And I drowned there.

But the ship reached the shore  
And they took me in their arms  
And they fed me and they clothed me  
Until I was well again.  
Until I could love again.

And I built a house  
In the middle of the woods  
And I loved a girl  
And I loved a girl.

But they called me to war  
And I couldn’t go  
But I couldn’t not go  
And I could have taken it all back  
But I wrapped my arms  
Around my dead before letting him go  
And I did what they said  
And witnessed the child breathe once more  
A smile on his lips like the one before  
And I fought with all that I could muster  
And I made a choice  
To unmake a man.

This must be the burden that only I could bear.  
The weight of all that had gone before,  
The mistakes I made, the monsters I built,  
The ground I broke, the skies I burned,  
Nobody could ever share.  
I burned the man who started the war.  
And I died there.


End file.
